Time.news – The debris of the second stage of the Chinese Long March rocket fell into the Indian Ocean, near the Maldives islands: much of the 18-ton wreck disintegrated on contact with the atmosphere, shortly after 4 am Italian time . But some parts fell to 72.47 degrees east longitude and 2.65 degrees north latitude.
Danger escaped
It was feared that the debris of the rocket launched from China could end up in the Mediterranean basin but the alarm had already returned in the late Italian evening. The Long March 5B rocket launched the central module Tianhe (Heavenly Harmony) into space on Thursday of the future Chinese space station.
The size of the object, 30 meters long, and the speed at which it traveled, 28 thousand kilometers per hour, had prompted all the most important space surveillance services in the world to be activated, from the Pentagon to the Union space monitoring and surveillance service. European (Eusst).
The US had made it known that they had no intention of disintegrating it to prevent it from doing harm. The European agency Eusst had already warned on Friday that the debris of the rocket would have fallen in a region of the Earth covered for the most part by the ocean or in any case in an uninhabited area, and that the statistical probability of a ground impact in areas populated was low.
The Chinese reaction
For its part, China, very discreet on the matter, had assured that it was “highly unlikely” that the remains of the rocket would cause damage and that it was more plausible that the carrier rocket would disintegrate on contact with the atmosphere.
Some Chinese media outlets had gone further, accusing the international press of sensationalism, “exaggerations that only seek to discredit” the Asian giant. But US experts had criticized the fact that the Chinese space program allowed the uncontrolled reentry of such a large rocket.
Beijing’s precedents and investments
After all, it is not the first time that a Chinese probe has been targeted by space surveillance services around the world. In 2020, debris from another Long March rocket crashed into an area of villages in the Ivory Coast, causing damage but fortunately no injuries.
The Tiangong-1 space laboratory – decommissioned since 2016 and wandering uncontrollably in space – disintegrated upon re-entering the atmosphere in 2018 (and Chinese authorities have always denied having lost control of the vehicle).
China has invested several billion dollars in its space program that it cares about very much: it sent its first astronaut to space in 2003 and a Chinese probe landed on the opposite side of the moon in 2019, a world first.
Last year, Chinese scientists brought samples from the moon back to Earth and completed Beidu, the satellite navigation system (competitor to the American GPS).
In the coming weeks, he will try to place a small robot on wheels on Mars; and then there is the more ambitious project, to build a base on the moon together with Russia.
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